


Margaret and Joshua Investigate: The Sweet Stuff

by realsorceror



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon Relationships, Comedy, Crime, Detective Noir, F/M, Female Detectives, Mystery, Pre-Canon, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-09-29 13:06:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17203952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/realsorceror/pseuds/realsorceror
Summary: An unexpected visitor leads Margaret the Dog on a twisted journey through the dark alleys of the Candy Kingdom.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think it's funny how the Candy Kingdom is either presented as a utopian dictatorship or a crime-ridden disaster depending on the episode. I prefer the latter interpretation. 
> 
> w/ apologies for using like every film noir trope in the book at once.

The normal business hours of _M. the Dog, Private Investigator_ were 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., M-F, so when someone knocked at my door at eleven at night on a Sunday, I didn’t answer the first time. After a brief silence, some scrabbling noises, and a second knock, I sighed and went to answer it. I was between cases and the rent was due. It wasn’t like I could afford to turn a client away regardless of what time of night it showed up.

I opened the door and stared at the dark, foggy street. At first I didn’t see anyone and figured it was gumdrop pranksters again, but when I tried to push the door open further it banged into something that groaned a little. A dark shape was slumped on the stairs.  I knew who it was as soon as the light fell on his face; Archie Congo, thief and second-story man. The old licorice’s mug was one more than one kingdom’s wanted posters. I didn’t see any hints as how he’d ended up knocked out on my front step, but I couldn’t just leave him in the street; Archie was bad candy, but nobody deserves that treatment.  I dragged him inside, left him slumped on the couch, and went to look for smelling salts. Maybe if I could wake the guy up he’d know what he was doing at my business so late at night.

If things hadn’t turned out like they did, I’d say that leaving a burglar unattended in the living room would be one of my dumber ideas. The crash of breaking glass had me running out of the bathroom, but it was too late to catch Archie. I got a glimpse of his lanky form running down the street, a large object clutched in his sticky arms, through the window he’d smashed. I instantly knew what it was: my best soup tureen, handed down through generations of Dogs. He’d woken up, seen it inside my china cabinet, and grabbed it. I could let him get away with smashing my window, but he wasn’t about to abscond with my family heirlooms! I grabbed my coat and went sniffing down the street after him.

The licorice smell led me through the hot-water crust streets of the business district down to the graham-cracker gravel near the city walls. The fog got thicker and the ground was a little sticky. I paused under a streetlight to get my bearings; the trail had led to a part of town that most of the nicer candies avoided. The empty storefronts and vacant streets felt eerie. I couldn’t help feeling like someone was watching me from the dark alleys. I followed the track all the way to the door of an empty house.

It was dark, and I wasn’t about to follow a thief into a blacked-out building. He would have to come out eventually. I sat down on the curb across the street to wait.

He never came out. Hours passed. I sat there until the fog started to dissipate. Just as I was thinking about leaving and reporting the theft, someone came walking down the empty street. The first thing I noticed about him was that he wasn’t a candy person; he was a Dog. The next thing I noticed was that he was headed for the same house that I’d been watching for the last few hours.

The third thing I noticed was that he was a pretty handsome guy.

He noticed me sitting there looking at him and swung over my way. He had a miniature crossbow over his shoulder.

“Hey, lady. Why are you sitting out here in your bathrobe?”

I squinted at him.

“Watching this house, what does it look like?”

“Ya seen anyone go in?”

“No.”

“I’m looking for my partner,” he explained, apparently not put off by my unhelpful response. “He’s missing. Tracked his scent down to this old place. The name’s Joshua. I’m a monster hunter.”

“Margaret,” I said. “Private investigator. I’m casing the joint.”

“Well, I’m about to bust in and check the place out up close, unless you’ve got some objection.”

I glanced at the piece he was toting and decided I was probably safe enough with him. Joshua, the monster hunter. He looked like he could handle a raggedy thief no problem.

“Think I’ll tag along,” I said.

 

The door was locked, but I jimmied it open with a hairpin from my robe pocket and we stepped inside. The interior was pitch dark and smelled like dusty old chocolate. I heard a snapping noise in the dark: Joshua, lighting a match. He held it up like a little torch.

The room looked like someone had used to live in the house, but hadn’t been around for a long time. I stepped over to the empty fireplace and pointed down. The furniture and floor were covered in a thick layer of candy dust. A clean trail in the dust led from the front door into the dimness. “That way,” I said. “Let’s jack one of these candles off the mantle.”

We lit one and followed the trail. The floor creaked in spots. It didn’t sound like anyone else was in there with us, but Joshua kept that crossbow at the ready. The footprints went through what looked like an old drawing room and ended suddenly at a wall.

“Tawdry old place, this,” said Joshua. “Like an old abandoned lamp in the garbage.”

“Or a used Halloween costume,” I agreed. I held up the candle and studied the pictures on the walls in front of me. They were mostly paintings of noble candy people hunting on horseback, royal hounds, complicated farmyards and sundry other idyllic scenes of yesteryear. One stood out: a tall ship on a stormy buttercream sea, sailing with ragged sails toward a sharp reef. I leaned closer to it and squinted. Was that something sticky on the corner of the frame?

It was; a gloopy blob of jelly.

“What’s that you’ve got there?”

I reached out and lifted the picture off the wall. In the space where it had been hanging was a recessed button.

“Looks like some kind of secret,” I responded, and gave the button a good jab. Something deep in the wall clicked. We both stepped back as it pivoted around with a scrape and exposed the opening of a tunnel. Joshua raised his crossbow and pointed it into the darkness.

“Ladies first,” he said, so I stepped through the opening and down we went. The tunnel went down for quite a while. I started to see some more sticky spots on the ground as we went.

“Looks like someone’s spilling some jelly,” I whispered.

The tunnel wound down about two hundred yards and ended at an old wooden door. I noticed a few sugary spiderwebs in the corners around it, but the door itself didn’t have any.

“This door’s seen some recent use.”

“Could be anyone in there,” said Joshua. “Open that door slowly, and I’ll secure the room. Ready?”

I nodded and yanked the door wide. He stepped forward, crossbow swinging, pointing it all over the room inside.

“Nobody’s here,” he said. “Just some old sacks of junk and – “

I heard him step on something that clanked as I followed him inside.

“My soup tureen! Be careful with that, it’s seen more years than an old farmyard dog.”

I scooped it up. The side was a little dented, but it was intact otherwise.

“Hey,” said Joshua. “Some of my cousins are farmyard dogs.”

 

I raised the candle and took a circuit around the room. The only other things of interest were a whole lot of bags, piled up high. Joshua sniffed one experimentally.

“Sugar? Who’s stockpiling sugar in a hidden basement under the candy kingdom? This stuff’s free and legal.”

“They don’t all have sugar in ‘em,” I said. “Check this one out. It’s got that sticky jam soaking through it.”

I opened the sack up, looked inside, and carefully closed it again. I felt a little sick.

“What’s in there? Are you okay?”

Joshua swung his crossbow back over his shoulder and peered into my face curiously.

“It’s what remains of the guy who stole my tureen,” I said. “Hard way to go for a guy down on his luck.”

“Who’d ice a candy over an old soup thing?”

“I don’t think it had anything to do with my family silver,” I said. “Let’s look in one of those other bags.”

Joshua ripped one of the fat sacks open. Crumbly, dark crystals poured out of it onto the floor.

“Hey, this ain’t sugar. What gives?”

“That’s sugar all right,” I said. “It’s _brown sugar._ That’s what they killed the guy over. This stuff is so illegal if the Banana Guard knew it was down here they’d flush out every lowlife in the city to find out where it came from. The only way to get it is by mining it from veins out under Lake Butterscotch. It’s dangerous, hard to get, and the black market thirsts for it like a vampire for red. Old Archie must have known it was down here or something. What?”

“You sure know a lot about this stuff.”

“I’ve seen a thing or two,” I replied. “This ain’t my first dead body.”

Joshua looked like he was appraising me and like he’d come to some kind of decision. It looked like his final opinion was a positive one. He nodded twice.

“If someone’s stashing it, they must be selling it to someone. We should call the cops.”

“No,” I responded. “Not until I find out who’s doing this and why that thief showed up on my doorstep last night.”

Joshua looked like he was thinking about arguing the point, but decided not to at the last moment.

“If you say so. Look, this has to have something to do with my partner’s vanishment. How about we go back out to the street and you tell me the whole story? We can case this place until someone comes to get the goods.”

 

This sounded good to me. We carefully put everything back the way it had been before we arrived and sat back out on the same curb I’d been on before. I stared blankly into the silver depths of the soup tureen and talked through what had happened earlier that evening. After I finished, Joshua explained that his partner, Sebastian, a salt water taffy, had gone out to the Candy Tavern a few evenings before and hadn’t come back. Joshua had finally decided to go looking for him and the leads had wound up at the same house that mine had. It sounded like too much of a coincidence to me.

“But we didn’t find any taffy in that house,” said Joshua. “Just a dead thief and bags of sugar. What do you use that junk for, anyway?”

“Baking,” I said. “It’s prized for its complex flavor profile. Bakers go nuts for it, but you gotta know where to buy.”

“Where’s that?”

“ _They_ come to _you_ , and they don’t sell to just anyone.”

“Well, two heads are better than one,” said Joshua. “Whaddya say we take a gander down toward the old Candy Tavern, next? Maybe you’ll spot something I didn’t, lady detective.”

I turned and looked at him. He had big, dark eyes.

“Look,” he said, “There’s too many coincidences for our cases to not be intertwined. I say we should help each other out.”

“I don’t usually work with partners,” I said. “I’m more of a self-reliant gumshoe type.”

He smiled at me. I felt my self-reliant insides melt a little.

“It just makes sense this way. Besides,” he said, “You’re about the prettiest dame I’ve ever accidentally discovered a smuggling den with.”

“Do you – do you really think so?”

“You know it.”

We leaned in closer, staring into each other’s eyes. I looked deep into his pupils and spotted something reflected in them. It was a person, climbing out the second-story window of the abandoned house! His eyes cut toward the movement at my sharp inward breath. We both spun to stare at the shape. It was a gangly, awkward thing, scrambling down the gutter with a sack over its shoulder. Joshua sprang into action.

“Vampire!”

He swung the crossbow around and fired a bolt at it before I could shout _wait._ The mystery stranger fell the rest of the way onto the street; the bolt smashed the window just over his head. He jumped up and ran immediately, before Joshua could load again, but I got a glimpse of his face in the moonlight. He wore a dark mask. I watched as he ran off into the night.

“Dang vampires. They’re supposed to be extinct,” said Joshua. I frowned.

“I don’t think that was a vampire. It looked more like some kind of – masked criminal mastermind?”

“Oh.”

I walked over to the spot where the masked man fell out of the window. A faint, waxy smudge on the street was the only evidence of the event. Joshua scraped a foot on the spot thoughtfully.

“Never seen a monster leave this stuff behind. Maybe you’re right. What now?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “He ran off in the direction of the bad part of town, though.”

The sun was lighting up the eastern sky. Joshua squinted at it and shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, then, sweetheart, what about an early breakfast before we continue this business?”

I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.


	2. Chapter 2

The candy streets were still quiet. We found an open bakery and bought a couple of pies. _Royal Pies_ : a newer brand, but with (the cart said) rave reviews. I thought they were pretty good. Joshua bought an extra for later. After that I headed home for a few hours; I was still in my bathrobe, after all. We agreed to meet up later.

The silence at home gave me time to think. I hadn’t expected to find a large-scale criminal operation so close to home. I didn’t think it could be a candy operation. Candy people, I’d found, tended to be a little too simplistic for something like this. No, this was bigger and more dangerous than they could come up with. Even the few bad apples in the kingdom usually stuck to more cut-and-dry schemes.

The answer clearly had something to do with the masked man. I decided I would have to try and find out who he was. Or _what._ If a big-shot monster hunter wasn’t sure what we were dealing with, I could assume it was someone more dangerous than usual. My cases tended to be safe, family-oriented type problems like cats in trees or lost jewelry. It was lucky Joshua had turned up. I wasn’t scared of much, but I felt safer with him around.

I had just finished making coffee and replacing my tureen back in the china cabinet, freshly polished, when someone came in the door. The clock said _9:00_ ; I hadn’t realized I was technically open for business. I hustled around to the front room, planning to tell whoever it was that I already had a client, and stopped before I got through the doorway. The person who had come in was big-time, all right.

“Princess?”

Yeah, it was her. I had never seen Princess Bubblegum up close before. She stood in the shabby waiting room, looking (I thought) vaguely haughty. Obviously, I couldn’t send _Princess freaking Bubblegum_ packing, so instead I opened the door to the office where I usually saw clients.

“Coffee? Tea? Juice?”

“No thank you.” She sat down and launched into what sounded like a pre-prepared speech without waiting for me to say anything else.

“Listen, I’ll keep this quick. Monday mornings are busy for me. I need to hire you for a case. The Banana Guard means well but they’re – they’re in way over their heads, frankly. You have a good reputation.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond, yet. She squinted at me.

“You _are_ Margaret the Dog, right?”

“That’s me,” I said, getting my feet back under me. “What’s the job, Princess?”

The Princess appeared to consider me for another few seconds and then nodded.

“Straight to business. You’re on the level, all right. There’s been a rash of disappearances in the Candy Kingdom in the last few weeks. It’s only lowlifes and bad apples, but I still need to _find them_. Or, anyway, I need _you_ to find them. Sniff out where all my criminals are going. I’ll pay double your usual rate. The catch is you can’t tell _anyone else_ what you’re doing. I don’t want the Banana Guards to feel inadequate, you know? It’s bad for morale.”

“No need for that. I’m already looking for one missing person,” I said. “It’s the perfect cover. Do you have any leads?”

“Only one; all the disappearances have been in the general area of the candy tavern.”

“Hmm,” I said. “That sounds familiar.”

“It does?”

I stood up. Someone was passing by outside the window; I caught a glimpse of yellow fur and big eyes and fought the urge to immediately smile.

“Give me a couple days, Princess. I’ll get back to you as soon as I learn anything. Thanks for your business!”

“Oh, okay.” She stood up. I hustled her out the door as quickly as possible. Joshua came in before her vague gummy smell had aired out of the room.

“The Princess? What’s she doing in this part of town?”

“New client, apparently,” I said, with a mysterious wink. He looked pensive and troubled, which wasn’t a bad expression for his face. I reminded myself that this wasn’t the best time to get distracted by which facial expressions made him look most dark and handsome.

“Sounds like a big case,” said Joshua. “I never worked for a client this high-profile before.”

Technically, this was _my_ case, not his, but I decided not to correct him. He had a stake in the proceedings, after all. I shrugged.

“She’s paying up front. I’ll take whatever walks in my front door. Speaking of which..”

The Princess had handed me a fat sack of something on her way out. I opened it up and looked inside.

“Jawbreakers,” I said. “She paid me in jawbreakers.”

Joshua laughed.

 

We both decided, without having to discuss it, that our next move was to set up outside the Candy Tavern and watch for suspicious types. For the first few hours, all we saw were dirty candy urchins and a guy selling pies out of a cart.

“Those pies sure are getting popular,” Joshua commented.

“Royal Pies? That’s what we had for breakfast.”

“They taste pretty royal. Someone must have a big operation set up to be making so many of them. Maybe they’re importing them from Wildberry Kingdom.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. It was getting on toward evening, and I was watching someone skulk around in the lengthening shadows. “Do you think that guy’s watching us?”

“Who?”

“That green and white customer.” I jerked my head over toward the distant candy person. “What is he, some kind of mint?”

“Taffy, I think.” Joshua paused, recognition dawning across his face. “Hey! I know that guy. Sebastian! Over here!”

He waved an arm at the stranger. The candy person froze, turned on his heel, and raced off.

“Hey! Come back!”

I had already jumped up and rushed after him. Joshua scrambled after me, overturning the table we’d been sitting at and scattering our late lunch across the pavement. Sebastian was faster than he looked. We pounded through several alleys, racing past confused-looking pedestrians and a pair of passing Banana Guards. I felt my lungs start to burn and dug around in my pockets for the sack of jawbreakers.

“Here!”

I passed one to Joshua and mimed throwing it. He skidded to a halt, raised his arm, and chucked a massive red candy at his fleeing partner’s back. The jawbreaker flew through the air and _thunked_ off Sebastian’s right knee.

He went down immediately. I charged the last ten yards, before he could get up again, and grabbed him by the arm. He struggled, briefly, but I spun him around directly into Joshua’s right fist. That seemed to convince him to cease any further resistance. We all stood around, panting, me still holding the fugitive by the arm.

Joshua recovered first.

“What’s your deal, Sebastian? Where have you been?”

“You shot me!” The candy looked a little dazed. I kept hold of him, just in case he was faking it.

“No I didn’t.”

“Don’t be a baby, you’re fine,” I said. “Joshua’s just got quite the arm.”

“Used to play quarterback,” he said. Was he blushing a little? It was cute, if he was. I looked away before my suspect could see the faint smile trying to fight its way across my face.

“My leg hurts,” Sebastian sniveled. I sighed and dropped him.

“Don’t run away again, or maybe he _will_ shoot you.”

“Talk,” said Joshua. He had steel in his tone. Sebastian looked like he was thinking it over and then sighed.

“Alright, alright. For old time’s sake. What do you want to know?”

“Uh, what about where you’ve been? Why were you watching us? Why did you run away?”

“I ran away because you saw me and I was watching you because..I’m working for someone who’s interested in you.”

“ _Who?_ ” Joshua loomed a little bit. His angry face was a little scary.

“I can’t tell you. No, you don’t understand. They’ll kill me, man. Ice me without even thinking about it. They know you found that stash, Joshua. If you hadn’t gone looking for me, it wouldn’t have mattered. They’re making me do this. But, look, I can draw you a map. A map to the sugar mine. I can help you. Will you let me go? For old times?”

“What old times? You were supposed to be my partner. I trusted you.”

“You don’t understand. I had to do it. They were gonna kill me. Why? One day, I was out walking, and I walked right up to their sugar mine. After that, it was you or me. Look, I’m sorry, but it wasn’t my fault. Let me make it up to you. I know where you can find them. Just let me go.”

Joshua chewed his lip and thought it over. I waited patiently; this didn’t seem like something I needed to be part of. Finally, he sighed angrily.

“Fine. But stay away from me, you hear? I don’t wanna see you again.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

I cleared my throat.

“How about that map?” I said. Sebastian looked deflated. Joshua scowled angrily at the ground. I dug around in my purse until I found my notepad and a stick of pencil.

Sebastian drew that map, all right. I tucked it away again and walked off toward the end of the alley while he and Joshua talked. I didn’t hear what it was about, and I only turned around when I heard a shocked yell from behind me. The scene felt like it was in slow-motion: Sebastian, pointing up at a tall, dark figure at the other end of the alley. Joshua, spinning around and leveling his crossbow. I couldn’t think of anything to do except wonder how the masked man had managed to find us so quickly.

Joshua fired. The bolt smacked into the masked man, who staggered and ran off down the alley. Sebastian took the opportunity to burn rubber, too. Joshua just stood there. I finally got my head right and ran past him and over to where the masked man had been looming, but the only evidence that he had been there was an old wrapper.

I picked it up and walked back to Joshua. The monster hunter looked at me and sighed.

“Dang it. But what can you do, right?”

I touched his arm gently.

“Sorry about your partner. Are you okay?”

“I’ll be alright. What do you think we should do now, detective?”

I handed him the wrapper I’d picked up. He looked at it.

“Royal Pies? What’s going on?”

“I think I _might_ know,” I said. “Let’s call the Banana Guard. It’s time to bust some heads.”


	3. Chapter 3

The hot sun beat down on the shores of Lake Butterscotch. The summer afternoon was sultry and thick,  with a promise of evening storms. We followed the twisting lines marked on the map; it led along the shore and toward a small cliff, where, to nobody’s surprise, I spotted an old door halfway up. Or, at least, nobody except our attending crowd of Banana Guards. Their leader stared at it in awe.

“ _Wow._ You really are a detective, huh?”

“Uh, yeah. Look, just go get a ladder or something.”

“Okay.”

He – _it?_ – hopped off back toward the city. The other guards followed. Joshua and I sat on the grass, a safe distance from the mine entrance, to wait.

“How long do you think this is gonna take?”

I yawned.

“I don’t know. Why, are you bored or something?”

Joshua shook his head. “No, that’s not it. I was hoping, uh, actually, that maybe you’d want to go out for a drink later. With me. Date style.”

I stared at him.

“You’re asking me out? Now?”

“Are you not into it?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s just that, uh, we’re about to raid this mine, and..”

I heard the distant sound of approaching Banana Guards.

“..pick me up at eight?”

Joshua beamed happily. The bananas came trampling up, carrying a ladder and making an obscene amount of noise. I hurried over to shut them up before the entire criminal underworld figured out we were there. By the time we had the ladder set up and the guards briefed and ready to go it was getting dark.

 

“Bust in there, grab anything that moves, and secure the mine. _Watch for civilians._ ”

How hard could it be?

I climbed up the ladder after Joshua and the guards had already gone in and sent back the all clear. I didn’t have a weapon, and I figured they were probably better at this stuff than I was. I made a mental note to get Joshua to teach me how to use that crossbow at some point; I couldn’t expect every case to be as peaceful as my past ones had been.

The mine was a dank, sticky mess that curved down and around and led directly under the lake. A sign near the entrance said _Safety is Everyone’s Business_ , but I didn’t see much sign that anybody had taken it to heart and set up an operational safety training program or anything. A few of the tunnels I passed looked like they had collapsed in. Sticky liquid seeped out of the ceilings and dripped onto the crumbling floor. Banana Guards stood around in the downward passageway, taking photos of the walls and whispering to each other. One turned to me and said “They’re all in the main room, down there-“ indicating a dimly lit side passage.

Joshua and a crowd of lost-looking Candy People were huddled in a group at the end. The Candy People looked more dazed than usual. Maybe it was just the light from the torches. Joshua waved an arm at them.

“Hey, check out these weirdos. They’re all the kidnapped candies.”

I squinted.

“How’d you know about those?”

“They put ‘em on the chocolate milk cartons. They were here all along! Wait, how did _you_ know about them?”

“I’m not supposed to say,” I said. “Better send them to the infirmary or something.”

He frowned at me, but apparently decided not to press the issue. This was, I was learning, one of his habits – if someone said they couldn’t explain, he didn’t ask any more questions. I found it endearing, in a weird way.

“Okay. What’s our next move then, boss lady?”

I shrugged.

“I guess we should clear out that stash in the city. Also, I’d like to know exactly where this brown sugar is going, and I think I have an idea. We just need to check it out before I run my mouth. You know, just in case I’m wrong.”

“Raid the stash, check your homework. Got it. Uh, how are we going to do that?”

“I just need to pick up a pie on the way into town,” I said. Joshua looked like he was catching on. He dug a wrapped pie out of his bandolier of crossbow bolts and other mysterious items.

“A Royal Pie, right? I still have this extra.”

“Let’s go outside,” I said. “I’m sick of this dank old place. It’ll be easier to check it out somewhere else.”

 

Back out in the sunlight, we stood away from the Banana Guard and the evacuating prisoners.

“Okay, you got the scent?”

“Yes ma’am,” said Joshua. He sniffed a handful of newly mined brown sugar, dropped it, ground it into the candy dirt, and smelled the Royal Pie carefully.

“Ah yes. That’s the stuff. It’s in there all right; my nose always knows.”

“I think I’m ready to lay it down,” I said. “Call the princess. I’ll explain it all.”

 

The second raid went off without a hitch. I suspect the reason was more that the Princess was already at the abandoned house when we (me, Joshua, and the Banana Guard team) showed up. The Guards looked eager to impress, but even they couldn’t donk up clearing an empty building and bringing sacks up through a tunnel. The coroner had come for the remains of Archie Congo. I stood off to the side and watched them come in and out of the house for most of the evening.

We did my debrief in the nearest precinct office. The Princess had a camera with her. I eyeballed it curiously and Joshua looked suspicious, but, she said “It’s just standard procedure.” I couldn’t really argue, since I had never worked for the Kingdom before. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. We sat in the Guard Captain’s office and she switched it on.

“Tell me what you know,” she said. No, demanded.

I stared into the camera uneasily. The Banana Guard office smelled slightly of stale graham crackers. The Princess seemed a little on edge, for some reason, but I tried not to let it bother me.

“It all started when Archie Congo turned up on my doorstep that night,” I said. “I might never have found the stash, otherwise. This whole thing centers around the smuggling operation and the people we know were involved. Kidnapped miners. A blackmailed monster hunter’s partner. A thief. And, an unknown masked criminal. I think Archie escaped from the mine and came to my office on purpose. He knew who I was. I don’t know why he left instead of staying there. I can only guess it has something to do with the masked man. He killed Archie, kidnapped candy people to work in his sugar mine, and he’s the one who roped Sebastian into the whole deal. We know the brown sugar was all to make those Royal Pies. I don’t know who he is, or what his endgame is – if he even has one – but the pies are part of it.”

The Princess frowned.

“What kind of conspiracy do you think this is? Criminal? Political? Financial?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Definitely the first one. Maybe one of the others, too. Whatever though; I’ve stopped part of it. Without knowing who the masked man is, there’s no telling for sure what else is up.”

“Too bad we didn’t catch _him_ in the mine,” Joshua said. “Come to think of it, there weren’t any guards at all. Just workers. What do you make of that?”

“Don’t know,” I said.

“Well,” said the Princess, shutting off the camera. “I’ll have to debrief the candy victims. Maybe they know something else. Detective Dog, thank you for your help in this matter – and your discretion. Here’s the rest of your pay.”

She left the office without saying anything else. Joshua frowned after her.

“Strange kind of bird, ain’t she? What about that camera, too? Wouldn’t mind having one of those myself.”

“Hmm,” I said. “Maybe. I’m not much of a movie fan. You know, I feel like this case isn’t over yet.”

“Whatever you say, sweetheart. How’d we make out?”

I checked the little purse she had given me.

“Three hundred sour gummies.”

“Generous. What about that drink?”

“Yeah, alright.”


End file.
